Mobile multimedia enters mass-market phase

25 Feb 2004

Nokia sees mobile multimedia entering the mass-market stage, the company’s chairman and CEO Jorma Ollila announced at this week’s 3GSM World Congress in Cannes. High quality imaging, third party applications, mobile email and streaming video services will dominate new products in the year ahead, Ollila said.

“Nokia sees excellent growth opportunities in three main areas; multimedia, enterprise and new subscribers. Furthermore, 2004 will be the year when we see the commercialisation of 3G WCDMA,” Ollila said.

“We have reached a subscriber base of around 1.3bn, with the potential to nearly double this over the next few years. Mobile data services will make up an increasingly large share of the mobile market. Accordingly, data is expected to account for close to 30pc of the mobile services market in 2007, compared with just over 10pc in 2003, clearly showing the trend of mobility being integrated into all aspects of everyday life.”

Ollila said that both Nokia and Vodafone had shared visions and strategies relating to 3G and WCDMA.

“Both companies are confident that the year 2004 is going to see the emergence of masss market 3G services. Nokia and Vodafone have also announced collaboration to bring Nokia’s 3G terminals to the Vodafone Live! offering”, the company said in a statement.

In terms of new markets, this year the mobile market will see the launch of push to talk services globally. Both Nokia and Samsung at Cannes revealed a cooperation agreement on push to talk. Samsung plans to introduce push to talk in several of its mobile terminal products during 2004 and 2005 based on Nokia’s push to talk technology. Separately, several Asian operators today announced their plans to introduce push to talk services commercially based on Nokia’s network solution.